


Burn Your Kingdoms Down

by rowofstars



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: ArchAngel Michael - Freeform, Biblical References, Blood, Gen, Introspection, Post-Episode: s01e04 Manly Whatnots, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-19
Updated: 2016-02-19
Packaged: 2018-05-21 13:35:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6053470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rowofstars/pseuds/rowofstars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lucifer's little vacation is only delaying the inevitable. The Devil is always a sad man.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Burn Your Kingdoms Down

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know you guys, but apparently I have sympathy for the Devil. The violence is not super violent or descriptive, but I thought warning was better safe than sorry. There's also a blink and you'll miss it Lucifer/Chloe thing, but I didn't necessarily intend it to be relationship-y. New fandom, comments appreciated.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one: God, Lucifer, and the archangel Michael walk into a bar.

This might not be a joke.

 

 

 

 

The seraphim watch.

He is called the morning star, the bringer of dawn. They say he is the one the Father loves best, but the truth is that he loves the Father the best, the most. 

It is the reason why he falls.

 

 

 

 

Mazikeen sits at the end of the bar, her legs straddling the stool and the sharp heels of her boots hooked around the bars bracing the legs. She sips at a martini, and eyes the singer. It’s some up and coming band with a blonde on guitar, Lucifer’s type, of course. The drummer is tall and dark, the brooding, quiet type and she thinks later she might try to make him scream.

Lucifer slides up beside her, taking the scotch that is always waiting for him and lifting it to his lips. He watches her over the rim of the glass, his eyes dark and human, unnerving. 

“He’s late,” she says with a roll of her eyes, her hair falling in her face as she turns away, back towards the stage and the sounds of the band warming up.

Lucifer shrugs and turns, leaning back against the edge of the bar, surveying his domain. “He was late even when there was no such thing as time. I should hardly think he’d start being punctual now.”

The doors will open soon. The line of people outside is down to the end of the block already and it will be around the corner before the guy in the Beatles t-shirt finishes the sound check. He sighs. They spit and spew, lie and cheat, and make him ache with all their wasted potential. He hates their lack of understanding for how great they could be, and how easy it is to make them fall. It’s as if they are born wanting to give in.

But there is a fondness there too, for the teeming throng of humanity. Here, in this club, it’s the music, the dancing, bodies moving and feeling as they were designed to do. Out there, well, he’s come to appreciate a different kind of justice, one that doesn’t require fire and brimstone.

Lucifer finishes his drink and turns to the bartender as he feels it, the tingle and rush of a holy presence.

“Michael!” Lucifer grins widely while next to him Mazikeen recoils and hisses, her hand on the dagger at her hip.

“Down, girl,” Michael says, sneering at Mazikeen as he floats to the floor. 

He lets his wings spread and flutter before they fold behind him, and Lucifer knows it’s to taunt him.

“You’re late,” he snaps.

Michael tilts his head and smirks. “I had business in Rome.”

Lucifer’s nose wrinkles when he thinks of Rome. The men and the churches, all their idols and the feverish devotion are things he’s never understood. The doors open at the front of the club, and a rush of people fill the room. On the stage the band starts playing, the dancers in their cages spring to life, hips beginning to roll and shudder. The singer’s voice is a thick sound in his ears, and he watches as Michael’s eyes drift to the stage.

Lucifer shuts his eyes a moment and just feels, lets the hum of life fill him with energy.

Abruptly, Michael turns to him. “He will be here soon.”

 

 

 

 

The heat singes his wings as he falls.

He cries out with the agony of it, folds them around himself, no longer trying to slow his descent. It takes an eternity and then some, but eventually he lands. The flames leap at him, curling at his legs, his arms, and the smell of burning flesh fills his lungs. He hears a scream in the distance. It echoes and amplifies until it is the only thing he can hear.

It is his own.

 

 

 

 

“Show me a trick.”

Lucifer frowns and looks down at the small human sitting next to him. “What?”

Trixie smiles and swings her legs back and forth, making her little body bounce against the sofa cushion. “Mom says you’re a magician,” she explains with a shrug.

His mouth hangs open for a moment. “Did she?” he asks. Trixie nods, and he smiles. Chloe isn’t ready to believe, but she would have to tell her daughter something. He doesn’t understand why that makes him feel the way he does, why there’s a sensation curling in his belly that makes him want to laugh. “Well, I can do this thing with a hat where I -”

“Lucifer!”

Chloe's shout interrupts him and he stands quickly, scowling. 

He follows her out to the car, his long legs barely able to keep up with her brisk stride. “You told her I was a magician?”

He sounds offended, but Chloe just rolls her eyes and walks around the car.

 

 

 

 

“Is it true?”

Lucifer glances at Michael. “Is what true?”

Michael stares straight ahead, across the river as it bends south towards the walled city. “You’re sending everyone up, a few at a time. You think He won’t notice.”

Lucifer says nothing.

“I remember when we had a choice.” Michael sighs. “Now it’s about who stays, who goes, who you keep.”

Lucifer lets out a small huff, and turns his head, watching the smoke in the east. He remembers being a soldier, a mother, a poet. For a while he was a man, a man who made a choice. He was a boy with a gun, a girl who drowned, a wife and a brother. He is the one who loves Him best.

“It isn’t fair,” he says finally, and beside him Michael nods.

“There is a balance,” the angel says, “A balance that needs to be kept. We all do our part, brother. We have to remind them who they are.”

Lucifer sighs. “Of course.”

 

 

 

 

His leg still hurts.

Chloe knows something is wrong. He can feel it in way she keeps glancing at him from the side, daring to take her eyes from the road for second just to examine him. He shifts uncomfortably in the seat and keeps his eyes looking out the passenger window.

He’s told her the truth, and still she will not believe. Every day he becomes more human, more mortal. A side effect, maybe. A fate, possibly. He doesn’t know if it’s the Father’s plan yet, but he can feel something restless in the silence, something building. Too soon, he thinks, there will be those who need to go, and those who become the hopeless. The lost he will take back with him, to grow the armies once more.

War happens as it has before. It is neither kind nor careful. He thinks of Trixie and for the first time in millennia he misses his wings.

They stop in front of a convenience store, behind a row of marked police cars and a ambulance. There is blood on the sidewalk and he can smell the sin in the air as he inhales deeply. Wrath. Envy. Greed. One of his favorite combinations.

Chloe puts a hand on his arm and he stops. She looks up at him, a crease between her eyebrows. “Are you okay?”

Lucifer smiles.

 

 

 

 

Mazikeen stands over him, her eyes alight with an eerie blue. The dagger arcs over her head, the black blade curling in the firelight, almost alive.

“Do it!” Lucifer orders.

His voice booms in her ears, compels as much as it begs. Still she hesitates. There is no going back from this. His fall will be forever.

He nods and she closes her eyes. Her arm swings and he screams. 

It slices through one and then the other, feathers fluttering in the air, catching briefly in the burning wind to swirl about and then fall down upon his scorched skin. He screams again and again, and there has never been a more unholy and wretched sound.

He will not return. He will not repent. 

This is acceptance.

 

 

 

 

He can feel her fingers trailing over his back, skirting the edges of his scars. She never touches them directly, not since that first time, but the thought is there. He can feel it between them, her sympathy and curiosity. Somehow there is no pain when she does come close to the mangled skin where once there were broad wings of the purest white.

He keeps his eyes closed and lets her think he’s asleep. If he wakes she will stop and right now he needs this, the intimacy of her trust and belief, the understanding she finally has of the truth of him. The sheet slips down to his hips and her hand moves lower, pressing into the small of his back and then curving over his hip.

She whispers his name with a smile and touches her lips to his neck.

 

 

 

 

Amenadiel is waiting for him, looking bored and leaning against the pillar at the end of the bar.

“He’s been here.”

Lucifer pulls a face and shrugs. “Who?”

Amenadiel scowls and strides forward. “Michael,” he sneers, holding up a feather that shimmers with gold. “I can smell him.”

Lucifer smirks and moves to the bar. “What if he was?”

“Jealous?” comes Mazikeen’s voice from the stairs, and Amenadiel glares at her.

“Does this mean you’re coming back?” he asks, stepping closer and brushing against Lucifer’s arm.

It’s a funny concept, really. An angel looming over the Lord of Hell. Lucifer’s eyes flash with fire.

“Aww,” he replies with a plastered on, cheesy smile. “Do you really miss me that much?” Amenadiel’s wings flex. He rolls his eyes. “It doesn’t mean anything. He was just stopping by to say hello. You know how much the archangels love their music.”

Mazikeen smirks and leans over the bar, her fingers toying with the cuff of his shirt. “We’ll have to go back soon anyway. Why not now? Get some fun in before the party’s over.”

Lucifer gives her a look and then grins. The doors open and the thumping house music starts. “The party’s just getting started, Maz.”

Mazikeen laughs and twirls her dagger as she walks around the end of the bar. When he turns around, Amenadiel is gone.

 

 

 

 

“You’re sure this is not your card?” Lucifer asks, flipping it around to frown at the seven of clubs. He was sure that was the card she was thinking of but the child is as difficult to read sometimes as her mother.

Trixie laughs and falls back on the couch, her little legs kicking in the air.

“No!” she squeals in between giggles.

Chloe looks up from the case file spread over the kitchen counter, her lips twisting with amusement. Lucifer meets her eyes and rubs absently at his leg.

Eventually Trixie rights herself and leans back against the arm of the sofa. “You’re really bad at this, you know.”

Lucifer shakes his head at her. “I told you I’m not a magician.”

 

 

 

 

There’s a dirt road leading away from the town and if he follows it, it will lead him to the sea.

Next to him, Michael sighs.

“It isn’t the same,” Lucifer says, kicking at the dirt.

“Give them time,” is the reply. “Father is always saying they need time.”

The accents, the music, the buildings, they are all replaceable. He wants to be elsewhere, Europe maybe. Somewhere that feels old. Somewhere that isn’t burning and hot.

Lucifer sighs and looks up, the sky dark with thick, black smoke. It should please him. He’d been waiting for this for literal ages. But there is a memory he can’t shake, a mother and a daughter, a purpose and the warm richness of his own blood as it ran down his leg.

A scream rings out, and then another. He shuts his eyes and pictures Mazikeen and her dagger, the lithe way she moves and twirls, like dancing. He slides a hand in his pocket, pulling out a card, and looks at for a moment before he lets it fall. The Lord of Hell’s eyes flash red. He strides forward, his footstep scorching the ground as the sky splits open.

Michael bends to pick up the card, and turns it over.

The seven of clubs.


End file.
